Thursday, July 23, 2009

Tonight I took my first baby steps into the world of quilting... I'm attempting to make a Disappearing Nine Patch quilt using nine different patterns from Joel Dewberry and Amy Butler's lines. Here's a few pictures and easy description of how you too can make this quilt!

Disappearing Nine Patch

It starts off easy enough. I cut simple perfect squares to make the nine original pieces for this block. I am using "busy" fabrics with big designs, so i decided to make my squares 6" to try to capture the designs better. I've seen others doing mainly 4" blocks, but so far I'm liking my decision to do them bigger. (and it helps that the blocks end up bigger which mean less blocks to make over all!)

Once you've pieced together the nine patches, you do some slicing and dicing and will end up with this.

Now your block is in 4 pieces. "Why would you cut a perfectly good block into four pieces?", you might ask. It's so you can do this!

Or this!

Or even this! Which is how I actually sewed my first block.

So I'm 1 block down with who knows how many to go. I need to decide first if I'm going for a decorative throw, or actual bed sized queen or king quilt and then do some math to figure out how many blocks I'm going to do in all.

In other news, I started a new job on Monday! I'm working as a clinical manager at a large home health agency. It's a similar role to my last job, but is a better company that services many more patients with more staff and resources to make my job so much easier. Thankfully it also came with a bigger salary and most likely smaller headaches. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it turns out great!

Lastly, for all my crafty friends out there, I was introduced to a FABULOUS fabric shop online that has great sales! Everyone go check out http://www.hancocks-paducah.com/ and browse around their whole collection, but specifically peruse the sale fabrics! They've got tons of 54" home dec weight Amy Butler and Joel Dewberry fabrics on sale for $4.98 a yard! I've seen these in my local stores for anywhere from $15 to $20 a yard. I feel so much better buying a ton when I'm buying it for 1/4th the cost!

Their sale fabrics include great prints from many popular designers, tons of quilting and fashion fabrics and some pretty batiks; so if you have any fabric needs, I'd go there first!